Y2K

Technorati Tags: Y2K,IBM

I read this article today and it brought back vivid memories from ten years ago. I was in IBM at the time and as the CFO of the division, I was responsible for ensuring that our business and customers didn’t crater when the clock struck 12.01 on 1/1/00.

The amount of work IBMers put into averting catastrophe was Herculean. There were layers of project teams remediating software, and when the software couldn’t be remediated, there were mitigation teams and so on. In many ways, it was IBM at it finest in marshalling its thousands of employees to focus on an urgent task.

Y2K was not viewed as a potential catastrophe but as a for sure event. We just didn’t know the extent of the catastrophe. If anyone knew about the Y2K problem, it would be IBM since they have been making computers since forever.

All our legal teams and outside counsel were alerted waiting for the flood of litigation. So there I was at a New Year Eve’s dinner at the Ritz Charlton. I was pretty anxious as the clock approached 12.00 and when it finally did, I was expecting my mobile phone to light up (we didn’t have smartphones ten years ago!). Nothing happened. Silence. In the end, I had to call the “war room” and there was a deflated voice on the other side. After a year of feverish preparation, nothing happened!

In the end, the outcome was good and it re-affirmed everyone’s trust in technology. To this day, I don’t know whether all those hours spent were wasted or not. Oh well, the world as we knew it didn’t end. All is good with the world.

Updated 1/14/10

I guess I spoke too soon as a Y2010 bug seemed to have impacted some 30 million users in Germany and Australia. Commentaries refer to the bug as the Y2K bug but I am not sure it had anything to do with Y2K other than poor coding.